Anne-Christine Wanders - UNECE Statistical Division Second UNECE Expert Group Meeting on Measuring Violence against Women (Geneva, November 2010) RESULTS OF PILOT SURVEYS ON VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN Summary of issues & lessons learned

Anne-Christine Wanders - UNECE Statistical Division Importance of VAW survey  Demand for information on domestic violence  Survey results used to monitor implementation of laws  Raise public awareness  Promote activities of organisations protecting women’s rights

Anne-Christine Wanders - UNECE Statistical Division Recruitment of interviewers  Basic skills on how to conduct a household survey are insufficient – additional abilities needed  Selection, training and supervision of interviewers is crucial

Anne-Christine Wanders - UNECE Statistical Division Training – lessons learned  Need to use question-by-question description  Importance of role-playing & practice of interviews  2-day training too short for full-scale survey  Additional training needed on:  sensitivity of topic  violence issues  how to deal with emotional and stressful situations

Anne-Christine Wanders - UNECE Statistical Division Field operations  Importance of direct & prompt contact between interviewer and supervisor  Length of interviews: on average 30 minutes - up to 60 minutes for victims of severe violence  Difficulty in obtaining privacy  presence of other household members  interruption during interview  need to find a private place

Anne-Christine Wanders - UNECE Statistical Division Initial contact  Use safe name to build trust  safeguard women’s security  risk of interference of other household members  Topic unexpected but welcome (Georgia)  Informed consent (Mexico)  very useful to prepare the interview  importance of allowing to say no  additional costs resulting from refusals  Highest non-response rate in urban area (Armenia)

Anne-Christine Wanders - UNECE Statistical Division Disclosure issues  Denial of violence when evident physical marks of violence  Easier to report on past than current violence  Easier to talk about economic violence than sexual violence

Anne-Christine Wanders - UNECE Statistical Division Partner violence  Need for better definition of « partner »  Difficulty to remember previous partners  Irritation with repetition of same set of questions for every partner

Anne-Christine Wanders - UNECE Statistical Division Problems with questions  V02-V04: too long – shortened by interviewers  Need to repeat/explain some questions and give examples  V02c – « insists on knowing where you are »  V04a and V24a – « insulted you or made you feel bad about yourself »  too general  V08 and V32 – sexual violence

Anne-Christine Wanders - UNECE Statistical Division Suggestions for full-scale survey  Use mobile team of interviewers – need to supervise them closely  Prepare information leaflets & give them at the start of the interwiew to help establish trust  Gifts for respondents  Information activities  Psychologist in team conducting the survey

Anne-Christine Wanders - UNECE Statistical Division Suggestions for improvement  Don’t number skips as separate questions  Merge V11 and V12 – check for physical & sexual violence  Allow to skip questions on physical or sexual violence  Add « no answer » to questions on sexual violence  Add questions on non-physical violence from others (N02)  Start with non-partner violence

Anne-Christine Wanders - UNECE Statistical Division Recommendations  Leave room for adaptation to national context and needs  more than two sections on partner violence  mumber of partners considered  additional questions  Stand-alone survey – best solution  Need to provide guidelines on how to use it as module

Anne-Christine Wanders - UNECE Statistical Division Discussion  Need to improve survey instructions?  Changes to questionnaire structure?  Add more questions?  Definition of « intimate partner » and information on previous partners  Measure of frequency  Rewording of questions?  Flexibility for interviewers to modify questions?

 Need to follow survey instructions  Guidelines on recruitment of interviewers – need to include practice of interviews  Module not necessarily easier than stand-alone  Budget issue  Testing how to incorporate module in survey? Which survey? Possible to shorten the module?  How to deal with all issues (recruitment of interviewers, training, etc.) in module  Report on pilot surveys very useful  Acknowledgement of limitations of project  Further work on analysis needed

Anne-Christine Wanders - UNECE Statistical Division Definition of partner  Lots of debate  Need to take into account cultural context  What type of analysis?  Starting point: ever married or ever co-habiting  Need to make sure intimate partner violence is captured  Need to avoid further complexity

Next steps  Need to answer key questions Is a module possible? How well can the indicators be produced?  Identify a number of countries in which testing can take place in first semester of 2011  Provide meeting report to countries to help undertake testing  UNECE to coordinate further testing  Map what is possible to do with administrative records  Evaluation of project – identify potential for future work